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Gene-ism and Mass Murder

Is there a gene for mass murder? Of course not. But within a week of the December 14 elementary school massacre in Newtown, state authorities were planning to do genetic tests on the tissues of the man who committed the horrific crime and then killed himself. There are real risks involved in this, and few — if any — scientific merits.

Even the first reports of the decision to examine Adam Lanza's DNA included warnings from experts. Last week, Nature weighed in with an editorial that stated bluntly:

Lanza's DNA will be analysed not because it will be useful but because it can be analysed. The ease of DNA sequencing will lead to a dangerous temptation to focus on minor, even spurious, genetic correlations at the expense of non-genetic factors that are more influential.

But aside from being a distraction, can sequencing Lanza's genes do any harm? Why not give them a look?

As a society, we have a record of attributing criminal tendencies to biological traits, and basing social policy on the results. Remember phrenology? Remember eugenics? Another false scientific theory that is particularly relevant is the "criminal chromosome." The 1961 discovery that some men have two Y chromosomes led to the suggestion that they must be doubly male — "super male" — and therefore prone to aggression. In 1968 The New York Times and other major publications jumped on this bandwagon. Social consequences soon followed:

In 1970, President Richard Nixon's personal medical advisor proposed testing the genes of every American child between ages six and eight, in order to identify those with "criminal potential." He suggested that "hard-core 6-year-old" children be sent to "camps" where they could learn to be "good social animals."

In the same year, the eminent geneticist H. Bentley Glass told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that he looked forward to the time when pregnant women would be required by the government to abort XYY "sex deviants."

showing — correctly — that XYY men were not more likely to be criminal than XY men.

In the wake of a tragedy like the Newtown massacre, it may be understandable to grasp at simple explanations, and to fall prey to spurious correlations. But to think that genes will tell us who to fear is a serious misunderstanding of genetic science. And history tells us that such erroneous ideas are extremely likely to lead to demonizing some group of people, whether identified by the shape of their head or the color of their skin or the religion of their ancestors — or the particular configuration of their DNA.

It sounds to me (based on what I've been reading about epigenetics) that we need to study both the human genome AND epigenetics, to understand more clearly the "software" that turns genes on and off.

Excerpt from the transcript of the TV show "Nova" episode about epigenetics:

"NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON:
(An epigene: a) tiny chemical tag of carbon and hydrogen, called a methyl group, has affixed to the agouti gene, shutting it down. Living creatures possess millions of tags like these. Some, like methyl groups, attach to genes directly, inhibiting their function. Other types grab the proteins, called histones, around which genes coil, and tighten or loosen them to control gene expression.

Distinct methylation and histone patterns exist in every cell, constituting a sort of second genome, the epigenome.

RANDY JIRTLE:
Epigenetics literally translates into just meaning "above the genome." So if you would think, for example, of the genome as being like a computer, the hardware of a computer, the epigenome would be like the software that tells the computer when to work, how to work, and how much.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON:
In fact, it's the epigenome that tells our cells what sort of cells they should be. Skin? Hair? Heart? You see, all these cells have the same genes. But their epigenomes silence the unneeded ones to make cells different from one another. Epigenetic instructions pass on as cells divide, but they're not necessarily permanent. Researchers think they can change, especially during critical periods like puberty or pregnancy."

We can't stop studying and researching things just because science might (and can, and sometimes does) get misused for political reasons.

I find it very interesting that I found this article through the Psych Basics page "Bias", and that as soon as someone may be interested in this killer's DNA, the writer of this article finds it necessary to expose us to a laundry list of horrible things the misapplication of genetics, etc. has led to. She(or the similarly-minded editor of this page)even goes so far as to presuppose that this would be some sort of ploy to distract from gun laws. The little blurb, "Aside from distracting our attention from proposals for gun control, can sequencing Adam Lanza's genes do any harm? Why not give them a look?" ends with a question which without the beginning might lead you to believe she has something intelligent to say about the issue at hand. But she begins it by exposing her own bias, and by making the questions that follow useless and sardonic. Whether or not this guy's genes play any part in what happened in his life is a separate question from whether or not our nation ought to have stricter gun laws. And people's opinions on each of these matters do not necessarily fall in line. However, the only way we can answer some of these questions (either to confirm or to refute intelligently) is to have unbiased (as much as they can be) scientists and philosophers working with as much data (morally obtained) as they can. A case like this could be useful to either side of the debate which the author here has already decided for herself. And, if you disagree, and think that information like this (and multitudes of similar studies) might be useful in anyway, you obviously are a Nazi and also would like to chemically castrate young boys, to say nothing of your love of legally obtaining any weaponry your gun-loving heart desires. Talk about bias.

Like many others who have commented on the sequencing of Adam Lanza's DNA (including, as I mentioned, the editors of Nature, one of the world's top scientific journals), I am both puzzled about what officials expect to learn that might be useful, and concerned about possible consequences.

It is just not the case that we can understand complex behavior by looking at a genetic sequence; we will not find an explanation for what drove Adam Lanza to massacre first-graders in his genes. And the endeavor to find answers by looking in the wrong place isn't necessarily harmless - as any number of historical precedents in criminology demonstrate.

Nikkos, if you'd like to continue this conversation either online or offline, I'd ask you two questions. First, what if anything do you think might be discovered by sequencing Lanza's DNA? And second, what if anything do you think might be learned from the history of biological explanations for violence or psychopathology?